미국 디자인특허 비자명성 요건의 새로운 판단기준

In U.S. patent law, the requirement of non-obviousness applies to not only utility patent but also design patent. If the differences between the claimed design and prior designs are obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, the design cannot be registered. To assess whether the non-obviousness requirement is met, the issue arises of identifying or determining the prior designs for comparison. Traditionally, the Rosen-Durling test, developed by case law, has been used in the field of design patent. According to this test, the primary reference must be "basically the same" overall visual impression as the claimed design, and any secondary reference must be "so related" with the primary reference. However, in LKQ Corp. v. GM Global Tech. Operations LLC, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit abolished the long-standing Rosen-Durling test and introduced a new standard based on factual analysis derived from the U.S. Supreme Court’s Graham v. John Deere Co. decision. CAFC reasoned that the Rosen-Durling test imposed an overly strict standard for non-obviousness, contrary to patent law and precedent, and therefore should be discarded. This shift aims to relax the strictness of non-obviousness analysis, but it raises questions about how this standard will be applied in practice. This article examines the grounds and direction provided by the decision. First, standard for analogous art must be re-established in alignment with the intent of the new standard. Second, as emphasized in the decision, design patents must be described through drawings, rather than verbal descriptions. Third, the legal framework for secondary considerations needs to be developed through future case law.